I searched for an answer to this question in the Transit NXT documentation but I can't find anything: When I use Find/Replace, once I get back to the starting point in my document, Transit always keeps searching and finds any terms I didn't replace replace the first time. Is there any way to modify this behavior?

Example: I like to use abbreviations when I translate and then fill them in during proofreading. I use "FR" for "frequency" to save typing time. In the document I'm working on now, there is also the term "FRR". I did Find/Replace for "FR" and naturally skipped over "FRR". Once I get back to my starting point, I want Transit to stop there. But the software just keeps going and finds "FRR" again.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Gary

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In NXT:
Usually you have a message, which says that the end of the document is reached and it doesn't start again until you click OK.
Also, you can search for "only words" (?) ("nur ganze Wörter" in German) - in this case only "FR" will be shown, without FRR.

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Yes, it's possible to select "Find whole words only" but that doesn't help in cases where I simply don't want to replace all of the words, e.g. I usually write "REF" for "reference" but sometimes the client docs already contain "REF" and I need to not overwrite those. Once I get back to my current position in the doc, Transit keeps searching, so then I have to manually return to my previous location. If I could find a solution for this, it would save me at least 1000 clicks per year.)

But perhaps it's just a clumsy implementation in Transit? Do you get the same behavior?

I'm running Transit NXT on a Windows 7 machine (64-bit).

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Do you at least agree that it makes no sense to search the document a second time if I've already searched the whole document once? My point is about efficiency, and I find repetitive, unnecessary processing steps counterproductive.

Transit NXT has plenty of other little problems like this, e.g.: Why do I have to click "Yes" every time in response to the message "The end of the document was reached. The search term was not found. Do you want to continue at the beginning of the document"? Why not give the user the choice to automatically continue the search and skip this message? That could be an option somewhere in the preferences.

These little inefficiencies add up if you're working full-time with this software.

Gary

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I'll also mention this one: In most word processors/text processing programs, I can select a text, click ctrl-F and the Find window opens with the selected text already pasted automatically. But not Transit --> More wasted time.

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Do you at least agree that it makes no sense to search the document a second time if I've already searched the whole document once? My point is about efficiency, and I find repetitive, unnecessary processing steps counterproductive.

Hi Gary,

I fully agree with you. And I was only joking in my last posting. I've indeed wondered about the strange search behavior of Transit many times. I've even filed an RFF to change it.

The reply was like always: we choose our own development priorities, we have only limited capacity in programming so, yes, we'll file your RFE, but don't count on it being rewarded in the next few weeks/months/years.

I'm mentioning this here because this has happened many times to me. This combined with the lack of the participation of a STAR representative in this forum (one that is not hiding behind an alias) made me realize that after ca. 15 years of daily work with Transit it had become time to move to another CAT tool.

It turned out that CafeTran was best serving my needs. The developer is very responsive to feature request. In the past year CafeTran was completely overhauled. There are only a few things that I cannot do with CafeTran that I could do with Transit. And there are many tasks that I can perform more efficiently in CafeTran (e.g. terminology building and maintenance).

I miss Transit's beautiful WYSIWYG view – but luckily rumor has it that CafeTran will be offering an HTML preview in the not so far away future.

I now only use Transit to translate PPF files that I receive from clients. This means that I have to merge the terminology files that I build in Transit with my central CafeTran term file (currently ca. 650,000 term pairs, plain UTF-8) regularly. I hope this won't be necessary anymore in the next year.

My advice to you: have a look at CafeTran's feature set. If you're not limited to Transit translation packages, it could be a good alternative for you.

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I've only been using Transit (NXT) for 3 years (after abandoning Studio 2009), but I share your frustration and dismay. I recently wrote to my local STAR office with a reminder of all the basic enhancements I've been requesting for the past three years ("intelligent" find - i.e. clone case - like Word does when 'Match case' is NOT selected; fill in 'Find' and 'Replace' automatically when both are already selected in Source and Target - like Transit's 'Insert selected'; check case of first alphabetical character in a segment, currently not checked and considered a 100% match; and a host of other things that need fixing/improving).

They (the local STAR office) told me more or less what STAR told you, but unlike head office they are very sympathic, albeit powerless to help move things on. They suggest we group together and send our requests to info@star-group.net (parent company in Switzerland) for the attention of the head of marketing and software development and for the CEO of the STAR group. I assume you've already done this, but I think we could keep plugging away at them. I think the first thing we need to achieve is the participation of a STAR representative in this forum as you keep pointing out, and preferably one from head office, someone who is in daily contact with "the powers that be" in Star. I find their refusal to interact with users a very arrogant attitude (like SDL, the key difference being that SDL have a huge customer base, vast development resources and issue fixes pretty quickly, so I'm told). I get the distinct impression that they no longer care about their product or their customers, that they're stuck in the 1990s.

[Edited at 2012-08-16 08:54 GMT]

[Edited at 2012-08-16 08:56 GMT]

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... a reminder of all the basic enhancements I've been requesting for the past three years ("intelligent" find - i.e. clone case - like Word does when 'Match case' is NOT selected; fill in 'Find' and 'Replace' automatically when both are already selected in Source and Target - like Transit's 'Insert selected';

These are all examples of RFFs that I have filed too .

When I started evaluating CafeTran, many of these basic features were missing too. Either the programmer is a genius (which wouldn't wonder me) or the Java frame work does make it easy to add this kind of basic but crucial editing functions. Anyway: they were added very quickly after. This was refreshing experience ...

They (the local STAR office) told me more or less what STAR told you, but unlike head office they are very sympathic

Mind you, the people at STAR Support Böblingen are very friendly and patient too ...

... with "the powers that be" in Star. I find their refusal to interact with users a very arrogant attitude

I agree. But unlike you, I have given up hoping things will change.

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My only reservation about the Java framework is the very annoying Java settings one had to change manually in Windows in SDL Trados Studio 2009 whenever a Java update was required (which is when I switched to Transit). Is this the case with CafeTrans? I'm always wary of software that relies on external/online technologies, the updates of which are outside the control of the developer.

[Edited at 2012-08-16 09:33 GMT]

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My only reservation about the Java framework is the very annoying Java settings one had to change manually in Windows in SDL Trados Studio 2009 whenever a Java update was required

I remember having troubles with TagEditor in the past, because I didn't have exactly the right (old) Java version. This was for me the reason to start separating my CAT tools in Virtual Machines that could be frozen.

Is this the case with CafeTrans?

I don't think so. At least I've never had any troubles in this regard. I've even tested CafeTran with the upcoming Java 7. But – feel free to ask this question in the CafeTran forum (just to focus on Transit in this forum): http://www.proz.com/forum/cafetran_support-1154.html

(I'm quite sure you'll get a quick answer from the developer.)

I'm always wary of software that relies on external/online technologies, the updates of which are outside the control of the developer.

Once more I completely agree with you (this is getting scary ...). Two things:

1. All CAT tools (I guess) depend heavily on third party components. Some examples: In Déjà Vu it was a third party RTF component that caused a lot of troubles, in Transit it is the MS SQL engine that is causing troubles etc.

2. Like I said: It is my impression that Java offers a lot of text editing features already built in. They just have to be 'activated' from beauty's sleep. Well, I don't know that. I'm not a programmer.

Note that Java has some disadvantages too. I'm working on a Mac and I notice that Java can be critical for certain tools like text expanding tools (like TextExpander), mouse pointer tools etc. (like LazyMouse). In some cases there are good alternative (like Typinator for TE).

I cannot comment on CafeTran's behavior on Windows systems.

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Another editor feature I'm sorely missing in Transit NXT is capitalization control, like shift-F3 in Microsoft Word (all lower case, all upper case, first letter upper case). That would save me so much time. I keep thinking that one day there will be an update and some of the bugs will be fixed and the obvious missing features added. But I won't get my hopes up...

Gary

[Edited at 2012-08-18 12:13 GMT]

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Credit where credit's due! Transit DOES support Shift-F3 (latest release of NXT at any rate, i.e. version 4, SP5, build 1050.7), at least it supports the same options as Word (i.e. UPPERCASE, lowercase and Sentence case). I've been urging them for 3 years to add Proper Case (standard case for proper names in English, e.g. John Smith) to their Shift-F3, but to no avail so far.

Regarding the long-overdue enhancements and bug fixes, I'm only slightly less pessimistic than Hans, probably because I'm a late adopter of CAT software (I only started 3 years ago, and that was with Transit NXT, after a brief and aborted attempt with SDL Trados Studio 2009) and I've invested heavily (both time and money) in Transit (Professional version), because I regularly farm out .PPF projects to 2 colleagues who have Freelance Pro.

Being a programmer (formerly full-time), I'm probably a bit more sympathetic to and aware of the technical hurdles STAR still has to overcome in order to bring their product fully into the 21st century and functionally in line with competing products. I suspect their development team is understaffed. They must be strapped for cash, and their marketing appears to be nonexistent, let alone their community support. They really need to make a quantum leap (a bit like SDL did with Trados Studio versus Trados 2007). Although I don't particularly like SDL Trados Studio, at least they involve their community of power users in beta testing and communicate much better. STAR's attitude vis-à-vis their users is far too aloof. All we can do is send them bug reports and RFFs, and their rare responses are depressingly negative, as Hans has pointed out.

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I've been urging them for 3 years to add Proper Case (standard case for proper names in English, e.g. John Smith) to their Shift-F3, but to no avail so far.

When you limit this kind of case modifications to the target pane (or Find/Replace dialog), the solution can be implemented with third party macro tools quite easily and reliable. That is: If the segment doesn't contain mark-ups.

I use Macro Toolworks and I've tested AutoHotkey too. Both work fine for this kind of tasks.

That being said: I don't want to invest time in writing macros to overcome shortcomings of my CAT tool anymore. Writing and debugging macros does cost me too much time. I just want my CAT tool to offer basic (IMO) editing functions.

Luckily there are CAT tool developers that listen to translators' needs.

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